1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for remote installation and configuration of software for a peripheral device, more particularly, to a method and system for installation and configuration of software for a peripheral device from a remote location.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the purchase of a new peripheral device, such as a printer, scanner, facsimile machine, or multi-function machine, users are faced with a problem of installing drivers and utility software on the computer to be connected to the peripheral device for the peripheral device to run properly. A general installation process involves the user connecting the peripheral device to the computer or a computer network with multiple computers, and installing the appropriate drivers and software. The drivers are either loaded from a recording medium (i.e., compact disc) that came with the peripheral device, discovered in the computer's driver library, or loaded from the peripheral device's manufacturer's website. This manual process of installing drivers can present difficulties for a user who is unfamiliar with the installation of peripheral devices.
Currently, in the case where drivers are provided with the peripheral device, various other software programs are bundled with the drivers, where these other programs provide additional features that can be used with the peripheral device, but are not necessary for the installation of the peripheral device. A user must determine from amongst the programs which ones are essential and which ones are not. Once that determination is made, and the software installation is complete, the software must be configured correctly in order to maximize the use of the peripheral device. Take for example a scanning device, where the typical function is to scan documents. A user might consider installing additional software such as an optical character recognition application, which converts scanned documents into text, enabling the user to edit the scanned document.
In addition to the difficulties encountered when installing the drivers and additional software, if the installation is performed using a recording medium provided with the peripheral device, or from the computer's driver library, the drivers and additional software are typically out-of-date. Drivers and software are constantly being updated to correct errors and/or improve performance issues. Unless a user loads the drivers and additional software from the manufacturer's website, the user typically loads out-dated drivers and additional software and is unaware of there are newer versions available. Generally, a user wants to install the drivers and software and get the peripheral device functioning properly immediately, without the trouble of spending additional time searching for updated drivers or software.
One current typical scenario to overcome the foregoing problems is for a user to have a qualified computer technician install and configure the peripheral device. However, this results in a user incurring additional costs (i.e., paying the technician's fee), as well as time. In a different attempt to over come the foregoing problems, device manufacturers have introduced an automatic installation service, wherein a user installs a software program on the user's computer that will automatically install driver and software programs from a remote server. This process, however, still leaves the possibility of a faulty installation and configuration.
Given the problems associated with installation and configuration of peripheral devices, what is needed is a new service for remotely installing and configuring drivers and software, where a qualified computer technician remotely installs and configures the peripheral device, leaving a user to only have to connect the peripheral device to the user's computer or network.